Dean Bubley

Complete Web Browsing On Your Cell Phone? Not Yet

KenC

Yes, I take your point about standards, but there's a lot about the PC-oriented web which is based on de-facto rather than de-jure standards. There's a lot of websites with Flash, there's quite a lot of websites with Java, there's a lot of websites with questionable Javascript implementations (yes, I know the difference). PDF wasn't an open standard until a couple of months ago, either, yet most people have viewed it as "must have" for years.

Many websites are "long tail" ones that are unlikely to be bothered about how well they render on mobile for many years, if ever. Based on the numbers I'm seeing & predicting, mobile access will remain a minority or secondary consideration for many website developers, especially in areas like B2B. I wouldn't expect Boeing's webmaster to be too worried about someone downloading 747 specs to a mobile phone, for example.

The market evolution will be defined more by "public expectations than published standards", to use your terms. If a given customer's favourite website doesn't work on a phone, when it does on a PC, it's unlikely to be poor standards compliance that gets blamed.

It's also worth bearing in mind the Flash Lite is already supported on a lot of phones, notably most of the current higher-end Nokia devices, plus it's being blended with Java by SonyEricsson. I certainly don't think Flash is the be-all and end-all of the mobile web, but I don't think it's going to suddenly evaporate either.